These days, most lexicographical information comes from online sources, including the
ever-changing usage in everyday texts and speech. Still, no lexicographer can do his work without referring
to classical sources. We owe a debt of gratitude to the following venerable editions.

When the Russian Dictionary Project began in 1987 in the Department
of Modern Languages and Linguistics at Cornell University,
5000 Russian Words With All Their Inflected Forms and Other
Grammatical Information (Slavica Publishers) by Richard L. Leed
and Slava Paperno served as the base for The Russian Dictionary Tree.
Clifford Flamm, Linda Flamm, Richard L. Leed, and Slava Paperno spent
the summer of 1989 formulating the organizational principles for the
new computer-based dictionary, an exciting novelty. In the course of the following year,
most definitions were rewritten, and new entries were added to
the original list. Carla Gordon worked on the nouns, Nina
Katz and Carol Clark on the adjectives, and Jean MacKenzie, Lesli
LaRocco, Carla Gordon, and Kevin McKelvey worked on the verbs.
Michael Harum, who joined the project in 1992, worked on many
idiomatic expressions.

Carol Clark, Boris Stremlin, Tamiko Toland, and Ludmilla Volnova helped us in the herculean task of proofreading.
We are also grateful to our early typists who mastered bilingual word processing when it was a rare skill:
Reef Altoma, Galina Atlas, Heather Behn, and Jill Castleman. Over the years (and thousands new entries), friends and colleagues
helped us raise The Tree. We especially appreciate the many scholarly insights offered by
Sophia Lubensky while the dictionary was being expanded for 12 Chairs Interactive: From Reading to Speaking
in 2006-2008; they will continue to influence our work.

The Russian Dictionary Project was supported by funds generously
contributed by the National Security Agency and The Consortium for
Lanuage Teaching and Learning. The 2006-2008 expansion was supported by a grant
from the U.S. Department of Education.